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PART TWO OF TWO PARTS
THE CRISIS IN TV THINKING
^ TVs steam-heated critics offer threats, jeers, and fallacious theories, but real problems lie much deeper
^ Worth questioning are 1934 Communications Act, FCC operation, and industry's own pricing structure
Last week, as Part I of this series on "The Crisis in Tv Thinking" SPONSOR editors examined six common fallacies and mistaken ideas which are clouding current criticism of the tv medium. The fallacies are:
1. The belief that broadcasters "don't want to improve programs, but just to protect profits and maintain the status quo."
2. The notion that tv programing would be spectacularly improved if the FCC made all stations "live up to their licensing promises."
3. The idea that interference in programing by "ignorant bungling agency men and advertisers" is chieflv responsible for tv's woes.
4. The belief that tv programs would be better if "we could only abolish those crooked, inaccurate rating services."
5. The conviction that tv is oversupplied with "brilliant creative people who are being chained and shackled by the system."
6. Most serious of all, the notion that tv stations and networks can improve the medium all by themselves, without the help, support and understanding of its commercial customers.
As sponsor pointed out, such theories are utterly untrue. They are unsupported by fact or logic, and untenable as a basis for attacking tv's actual problems.
Though they are widely held by many people (including some in high places) they only tend to obscure and emotionalize the real issues.
SPONSOR believes that today, as never before in the history of broadcasting there is a need for calm, clear thinking that goes back to fundamentals.
\\ e supnest that the following subjects need exhaustive industry study:
1. The Communications Act of 1934. Is this act, drawn 27 years ago, before television began, and when radio was only just emerging as a national force, a realistic and reasonable document today?
Or is the Communications Act, with its mam ambiguities and cloudiness, particularly in the area of "public interest, convenience and necessit\." a hangover from a bygone day when the nature and value of free commercial broadcasting was only dimly perceived and understood?
Ex-president Herbert Hoover, who was largely instrumental in setting up the Radio Act of 1927 on which the Communications Act of 1934 was based, and whose thinking dominated earlv government attitudes on broadcasting admitted last year, in a telegram to the RTES that many of his concepts of 30-odd years ago had been proven wrong, particularly his fears that advertising would "kill"* the air media.
Said Mr. Hoover in 1960. ". . even the pain of singing commercials. I justify even these by the realization that from the support of ad
PART II
Practical
roads to tv
improvement
Last week SPONSOR discussed the muddled thinking behind much tv criticism. This week's article suggests practical approaches for solving tv's program problems.
32
>ponmii;
19 june 1961